Indeed the examiner cited a whole bunch of prior art, including:

PRwire; "Matchmaker.com Creates Business Development Unit for Gift Sales"; Jan. 20, 2000: pp. 1 and 2. cited by examiner .
"GiftCardSwapping.com"; http://web.archive.org/web/20070520051410/http://www.giftcardswapping.com- /; Sunday, May 20, 2007; p. 1. cited by examiner .
"Gift Card Exchange, Buy Gift Card, Discount Gift Cards, Cash Gift Card Swap"; http://web.archive.org/web/20080724163511/http:giftcardrescue.com/- ; Apr. 12, 2008-Jul. 11, 2011; pp. 1-3. cited by examiner .
"CBLS.www.cbls.com.(World Web Watch)."; Advanced Materials & Processes, v160, n6; Jun. 2002; p. 1. cited by examiner .
"Eugene Science"; Edgar Online; May 23, 2006; pp. 1-5. cited by examiner .
Mathieu, Elizabeth; "Opinion: Delaware: An unparalleled home for your trust"; Private Asset Management, v5, n20; Oct. 5, 1998; pp. 1 and 2. cited by examiner .
US Fed News Service, Including US State News;"Publication No. WO/2009/109949 Published on Sep. 11, Assigned to France Telecom for Electronic Gifting System (American Inventor)"; Sep. 15, 2009; p. 1. cited by examiner

There a whole load more patent documents listed in the patent as prior art.

Anyways, if sued I would probably just request a re-exam by the office, its only a couple of thousand bucks.

I wonder why this application was not initially examined in class 725, but was instead searched only in business methods class 705?

There are all different ways, cue tones, fades to black, commericals in mono rather than stereo, entitlement msgs. Those are just a few ways. The old replay tv's worked off of black frames for commercial skipping, which worked fine most of the time, but had issues with some scene changes.

Dish network owns most of replay's patent portfolio, but the above methods have been known for a long time.

in 2003 there was telecommuting (they started in 1997), it was just for trademark examiners and a small patent examiner pilot.

As of 2012 more than half of the examiners are either telecomutting 1 day a week or working from home full time (about 1/3rd or more of all examiners hotel). There are examiners working from home in hawaii, cali, texas, etc.

You need to be a gs-12 patent examiner with 2 years in the office to work form home fulltime. Telework might be less time, but im not sure.

The USPTO right now has tons of people knocking at their door trying to get in to become examiners.... Go read on various IP blogs and you will find all sorts of stories about it, though at the moment the office is giving preference to those with IP experience.

The pay is pretty good actually, people start at 50-80k with 1-2 years out of school (and are eligble for up to two promotions within their first year up to gs-11), and make 100k before bonuses and overtime within 3-5 years depending on what paygrade they were hired at. You get paid overtime (up to 50 hours every two weeks if authorized, up to a max of 155k a year) , flextime etc. Its pretty easy to go on several month long vacations each year if you want by simply working hours in advance. You get 13 days of vacation to start, 20 after 3 years and 26 after 15 years. The flexible work schedules enable you to basically set your own hours, you could work one week straight for 12 hours a day and not need to show up the next week. You could do the same thing the next biweek and work all your hours the secondweek, congrats now you have a 2 week vacation!

Plus after two years you can work from home anywhere in the continental 48 states. There is a new office opening in detroit in july and potentially other regional offices as well. So you can make a DC wage and live somewhere cheap if you really want.

If you had waited another year or two, you would have been eligible for the 10k a year for 4 year signing bonuses that they were offering.

Look overseas, in europe and asia it is much more common. In china it is becoming less common, though much of the government political class has technical degrees.

In the USA, it seems that the second generation of CEOs in tech companies lack tech degrees, and then the downhill slide begins.

so just like they do in japan, except their old cars just get sold overseas

Hardly a mention of the kid who was covered in gas and lit on fire in retaliation, nor the beating of a 78 year old man.

What about fallout 1-2? The ending was pretty specific as to what exactly you did in each town....

Why the heck doesn't anyone who has a CAC/PID, the government's trusted ID card used by civilians, military and contractors have access to these lines? The government already spent plenty of cash doing background checks on these people.

My card (the standard gov issued one) gets me into the whitehouse (even the west wing) with an escort, with the security screen process being less intrusive than going through an airport. Heck, the west wing doesn't even have any screening. The guard just opens the gate and lets you in.